It is a great honor for Platform China Contemporary Art Institute to announce that “Wu Shan 2020”, the solo exhibition of artist Wu Shan, will be presented on October 17. As the second important solo exhibition of Wu Shan held at Platform China after Winding Path, this exhibition will have three independent units to constitute the narrative structure. Wang Min’an and Liang Chao will be invited to be the academic advisers of the exhibition.

Wu Shan (born in 1960) was graduated from the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts in the early-1980s. Later, he studied in the US and acquired the master’s degree from the Graduate School of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He lived and worked in the US for more than 20 years and was absorbed in studying on and practicing painting languages. On the one hand, Wu Shan took example by the principles of form of high modernism during his creation; on the other hand, he absorbed and transformed the aesthetic experience of Chinese tradition. He found the unique way of connecting his concepts and aesthetics in the experiment of lacquer materials and established the artistic style with personal features.

In order to intensively demonstrate the context of the artistic practices of WuShan, Platform China will separately display three parts of the exhibition at the principal space and dRoom:

On November 28, the principal space of Platform China will present the third important part of the exhibition, i.e., the sketches created in nearly thirty years. For him, the manuscripts are comparable to daily classes, demonstrate his most direct consideration of painting and reveal his private emotion. He went to the US in the early-1980s. In the lengthy time of 20-plus years, he experienced both bald and tedious life, and irritative, curious, sorrowful, depressed, lively, confused, abandoned, excited and illusive life. However, the changeable life did not wear down his tough individual will. Thanks to his extreme belief in and reliance on art, he accumulated abundant manuscripts – the spiritual diaries of the artist. The exhibition hopes to demonstrate the person through these dairies, from which the audience can get a glimpse of the era.

Somebody lives like a bright flag, while others exist like a transparent paper. WuShan is definitely the latter – we can find from him that the existence of life gradually settles down to art. He was born and grew up in Hangzhou. The context typical of the regions south of the Yangtze River nourishes artists like Wu Shan. He spent forty years to make his life explicit gradually, and leaves behind those elegant lines.